Computer systems may include different resources used by one or more host processors. Resources and host processors in a computer system may be interconnected by one or more communication connections. These resources may include, for example, data storage devices such as those included in the data storage systems manufactured by EMC Corporation. These data storage systems may be coupled to one or more servers or host processors and provide storage services to each host processor. Multiple data storage systems from one or more different vendors may be connected and may provide common data storage for one or more host processors in a computer system.
A host processor may perform a variety of data processing tasks and operations using the data storage system. For example, a host processor may perform basic system I/O operations in connection with data requests, such as data read and write operations.
Host processor systems may store and retrieve data using a storage device containing a plurality of host interface units, disk drives, and disk interface units. The host systems access the storage device through a plurality of channels provided therewith. Host systems provide data and access control information through the channels to the storage device and the storage device provides data to the host systems also through the channels. The host systems do not address the disk drives of the storage device directly, but rather, access what appears to the host systems as a plurality of logical disk units. The logical disk units may or may not correspond to the actual disk drives. Allowing multiple host systems to access the single storage device unit allows the host systems to share data in the device. In order to facilitate sharing of the data on the device, additional software on the data storage systems may also be used. In a common implementation, a Storage Area Network (SAN) is used to connect computing devices with a large number of storage devices. Management and modeling programs may be used to manage these complex computing environments, which may be, include, or be included in a data center.
A data center refers to processing functionality for performing one or more prescribed processing tasks. For example, a provider may use a data center to implement any kind of network-accessible service. In some cases, the provider may use a specially designed computer room within a general purpose facility to implement the data center. For a particularly large-scale service, the provider may devote one or more separate facilities to implement the data center.
It will be appreciated that in recent time such data centers have grown substantially in size. It will be known that such modern data centers may comprise a plurality of data center equipment such as data storage systems. For example, the data center may comprise hundreds or thousands of discrete data storage systems. It will be understood that the task of managing such systems can be extremely arduous.